1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a memory control apparatus, for example, for performing control of writing to a shock proof memory, a program thereof, a method thereof, and a reproduction apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, along with an HDD becoming large in a recording capacity and development of compression techniques of music, moving pictures and still images, etc., an enormous amount of content data can be stored in a recording medium in a portable reproduction apparatus.
Such a portable reproduction apparatus reads data stored in an HDD as above and reproduces the same.
While the HDD has a large recording capacity, a reading error by the head may arise when a jolt is given.
In a portable device, to reproduce data at a constant rate even if such a reading error arises, data read from the HDD is temporarily stored in a semiconductor memory (shock proof memory) and the data is read and reproduced at a constant rate from the semiconductor memory.
Writing of data from the HDD to the semiconductor memory starts immediately before data stored in the semiconductor memory becomes empty to keep the HDD in a non-activated state for a long time in terms of saving power consumption.
Specifically, in the total time of a starting time that the HDD starts up from a non-activated state to an activated state and a reading time that data is actually read from the HDD in an activated state, by using a data amount read from the semiconductor memory as a threshold value, the portable reproducing device starts to write data from the HDD to the semiconductor memory at a timing that a data amount of data stored in the semiconductor memory becomes the threshold value or smaller.
In a portable reproduction apparatus of the related art, a maximum starting time regulated by a manufacturer of the HDD is used as the above starting time of the HDD.